Lawyer at Trump Tower meeting linked to Kremlin
MOSCOW — An organization established by an exiled Russian tycoon says it has obtained emails showing collaboration between Russian government officials and the lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. in 2016 and has denied having connections to the Kremlin.
The emails the Dossier organization said it was sent suggest Natalia Veselnitskaya worked closely with a top official in Russia's prosecutorgeneral's office to fend off a U.S. fraud case against one of her clients.
Veselnitskaya has denied connections to the Russian government since her meeting with thencandidate Donald Trump's son, son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign chairman Paul Manafort surfaced during the investigation of Moscow's meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
The encounter at Trump Tower in New York took place after Trump Jr. was told the Russian lawyer had potentially incriminating information about Trump's election opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Veselnitskaya is wellconnected as a lawyer in Moscow, but the extent and nature of her government ties has been unclear. She could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.
Dossier, which provides information about officials and business leaders it considers part of the "Kremlin political group," said Friday it had been sent a series of emails from 2014 that show Veselnitskaya set out strategies for responding to a United States request for assistance in a moneylaundering case involving her client.
Veselnitskaya was helping to defend the Prevezon Holdings company and its owner, Denis Katsyv. U.S. prosecutors accused Katsyv Veselnitskaya of laundering proceeds from a $230 million Russian tax-fraud scheme by buying real estate in the U.S.
Dossier published screen shots of what it said were emails about the case between Veselnitskaya and Sergei Bochkarev, head of the criminal investigation division of the prosecutorgeneral's office. The organization did not reveal if it knew who shared the emails, if they were sent anonymously or if any efforts were made to verify their authenticity.
The Kremlin did not comment on the prosecutor's cooperation with Veselnitskaya.
Last year, the Justice Department settled its case, with Prevezon paying $6 million in fines while not admitting guilt.
Dossier is an arm of exiled tycoon and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a onetime oil billionaire who spent a decade in prison on fraud and tax-evasion convictions that were widely seen as retaliation for his political ambitions and opposition to Putin.